Motivations and Fights for Status - If you’re only motivated by compassion for those in need, why do you need to boast?
If one does boast, though, it is perceived as a status raising attempt.
Now, if the boast actually raises status, that’s great, but this isn’t always the case. Because humans have a strong egalitarian instinct (“insulting the meat”, Matthew 6:5, etc), whenever a purposeful attempt to boost status is perceived by others, it often backfires. This is the actual reason that people are hesitant to boast.
I’ve witnessed myself (mis)using egalitarian instinct this way—I recently came into contact with a person who boasted to refusing a stipend. They were also boasting about many other things unrelated to charity and mildly putting down others, and I came away with the impression that they were a very status-seeking person—even though one boasts was about an altruistic act, it still counted against them in my mind.
Can we come up with some effective ways to communicate what we have donated, which allow us to avoid the wrath of the egalitarian instinct? Donation drives often call out the numbers that people donate, so that people can plausible deny that they wanted to boast. Also, when people want to show off, they try to just casually work it into the conversation (again, to maintain plausible deniability). How can we generate plausibly deniability in this area efficiently? Are there any ways to accomplish the goal without invoking plausible deniability?
Just have a place people can look as per Jeff Kaufman. Example conversation:
A: ”… [taxes | charity | income | giving back | etcetera].” B: “Ho-ho! [Obligatory calculated utility vs. warm fuzzies preface], so I try to just pick a percentage and be done with it.” C: “How much do you give?” B: “I’d have to check to precise—I keep a log on [ ___ ] to keep track. I feel a lot better for example giving my falafel to a starving puppy on the street than picking my donation percentage, but knowing I do donate, and do so efficiently, helps me live with myself.” A: “What percentage on average do you give?” B: “Depends on the year, financial pressures, how much I want to spend on personal things—honestly, I’d have to check. (I do remember my first year I managed to donate around [ __%])” C: “So you don’t really care about donating to charities, but do it anyway to make you feel better about yourself?” A: “That sort of contradicts the whole spirit of giving-” B: “Sorry, I should have been clearer. When I think about what I want to do with my life, the answer always comes back to: help as many people as much as I can. I’m not particularly suited to accomplish that goal in any means besides making money, so I make money and donate in order to satisfy my ambition. However, the whole act is remarkably lacking in emotional impact—I know I’m horrible for feeling this, but when I hear about others giving to pet causes they haven’t scrutinised, I feel like I’m better than them. That’s about the extent of the emotional impact of donating, for me. Help someone personally, though, and I feel like Superman.” A: “Your said goal in life is to help a bunch of people a whole lot, right?” B: “Essentially, yes.” A: “But fulfilling that goal doesn’t make you happy—it just lets you get by; you do other ‘personal’ things to be happy, for which you spend money from time to time.” B: “Pretty much.” A: “And you feel like you’re better than other people because you think your cause(s) help(s) more people.” B: “It’s still great they donate, but I get frustrated they don’t put more effort into it, and I feel good about myself for having done the effort.” C: “Do you think you’re better than us?” B: “I’m afraid the logical conclusion of this hypothetical would be yes. Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned the superiority complex bit.” A: “Yes, perhaps not.” C: “We might have caught on, then.” B: “Terribly sorry.” A: “Quite alright.” C: “Yes. Have a good night.” A: “Yes.” B: ”...(sigh)”
Can we come up with some effective ways to communicate what we have donated, which allow us to avoid the wrath of the egalitarian instinct?
Pull-based rather than push-based systems can help with this. That is, if I perceive myself as having looked up your donations, rather than perceiving you as having informed me of them, I’m less likely to perceive you as boasting. The example you give of donation drives reporting amounts takes advantage of this.
Making reporting the unmarked case can also help with this. If I expect everyone to report their charitable donations (for example, if it’s mandatory), I’m less likely to perceive the fact that you reported your donations as boasting.
Indirection can also help with this. If a third party reports your donations, I’m less likely to perceive you as boasting. (The “wing-man” strategy for dating is similar to this.)
Can we come up with some effective ways to communicate what we have donated, which allow us to avoid the wrath of the egalitarian instinct?
This is the critical part.
Quick idea: You could create a “charity group” which would have membership, and would encourage people to give money to charity. The actual amounts of money given to specific causes would be publicly reported with members anonymized, like this: “In our group G, unspecified individuals donated to this cause the following amounts: X1, X2, X3.”
Your name would not be connected with the amount directly, but as a known member of the group you would still get some status indirectly. You could say: “My group supports a lot of causes, see here.” It does not sound as selfish as when you speak about yourself. Also, the total numbers would be more impressive (“I gave $100″ vs “our group of ten people gave $1000”).
Possible free-rider problem. Could be overcome by making the donations non-anonymous within the group, and anonymized only for the outside world. Or even anonymized for most of members (except those who do the accounting). For example as a member you precommit to give at least $X every year through the group, and this is verified. This information could also be made semi-known to the public (you don’t announce it too much, but it is in FAQ on your webpage).
If you are going to make a charity group anyway though, you might as well announce the name of the donor. The social pressures to donate will be higher if you announce the name of the donor, and as explained earlier the donor will not be punished by egalitarian instinct because the donor did not choose to have their name published in the public report—in fact the donor will get a higher status.
Could be overcome by making the donations non-anonymous within the group, and anonymized only for the outside world.
That could work! That way, you can tell outsiders “We are 20 people who raise a total of $10,000, will you help us?” It creates the feeling that everyone is donating, and doesn’t sound like boasting.
However, following the principles outlined above, within the group you wouldn’t want any anonymity at all (unless there is some hidden benefit to anonymity over plausibly-deniable publicity which you are seeing that I am not).
the donor will not be punished by egalitarian instinct because the donor did not choose to have their name published in the public report
I think this would work fine. I would probably put an emphasis in the report on the group first—start by speaking about common effort and how much the group did together; provide individual names and numbers at the bottom of the page, or as a sidebar on the right side of the page.
If one does boast, though, it is perceived as a status raising attempt.
Now, if the boast actually raises status, that’s great, but this isn’t always the case. Because humans have a strong egalitarian instinct (“insulting the meat”, Matthew 6:5, etc), whenever a purposeful attempt to boost status is perceived by others, it often backfires. This is the actual reason that people are hesitant to boast.
I’ve witnessed myself (mis)using egalitarian instinct this way—I recently came into contact with a person who boasted to refusing a stipend. They were also boasting about many other things unrelated to charity and mildly putting down others, and I came away with the impression that they were a very status-seeking person—even though one boasts was about an altruistic act, it still counted against them in my mind.
Can we come up with some effective ways to communicate what we have donated, which allow us to avoid the wrath of the egalitarian instinct? Donation drives often call out the numbers that people donate, so that people can plausible deny that they wanted to boast. Also, when people want to show off, they try to just casually work it into the conversation (again, to maintain plausible deniability). How can we generate plausibly deniability in this area efficiently? Are there any ways to accomplish the goal without invoking plausible deniability?
Just have a place people can look as per Jeff Kaufman. Example conversation:
A: ”… [taxes | charity | income | giving back | etcetera].”
B: “Ho-ho! [Obligatory calculated utility vs. warm fuzzies preface], so I try to just pick a percentage and be done with it.”
C: “How much do you give?”
B: “I’d have to check to precise—I keep a log on [ ___ ] to keep track. I feel a lot better for example giving my falafel to a starving puppy on the street than picking my donation percentage, but knowing I do donate, and do so efficiently, helps me live with myself.”
A: “What percentage on average do you give?”
B: “Depends on the year, financial pressures, how much I want to spend on personal things—honestly, I’d have to check. (I do remember my first year I managed to donate around [ __%])”
C: “So you don’t really care about donating to charities, but do it anyway to make you feel better about yourself?”
A: “That sort of contradicts the whole spirit of giving-”
B: “Sorry, I should have been clearer. When I think about what I want to do with my life, the answer always comes back to: help as many people as much as I can. I’m not particularly suited to accomplish that goal in any means besides making money, so I make money and donate in order to satisfy my ambition. However, the whole act is remarkably lacking in emotional impact—I know I’m horrible for feeling this, but when I hear about others giving to pet causes they haven’t scrutinised, I feel like I’m better than them. That’s about the extent of the emotional impact of donating, for me. Help someone personally, though, and I feel like Superman.”
A: “Your said goal in life is to help a bunch of people a whole lot, right?”
B: “Essentially, yes.”
A: “But fulfilling that goal doesn’t make you happy—it just lets you get by; you do other ‘personal’ things to be happy, for which you spend money from time to time.”
B: “Pretty much.”
A: “And you feel like you’re better than other people because you think your cause(s) help(s) more people.”
B: “It’s still great they donate, but I get frustrated they don’t put more effort into it, and I feel good about myself for having done the effort.”
C: “Do you think you’re better than us?”
B: “I’m afraid the logical conclusion of this hypothetical would be yes. Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned the superiority complex bit.”
A: “Yes, perhaps not.”
C: “We might have caught on, then.”
B: “Terribly sorry.”
A: “Quite alright.”
C: “Yes. Have a good night.”
A: “Yes.”
B: ”...(sigh)”
Pull-based rather than push-based systems can help with this. That is, if I perceive myself as having looked up your donations, rather than perceiving you as having informed me of them, I’m less likely to perceive you as boasting. The example you give of donation drives reporting amounts takes advantage of this.
Making reporting the unmarked case can also help with this. If I expect everyone to report their charitable donations (for example, if it’s mandatory), I’m less likely to perceive the fact that you reported your donations as boasting.
Indirection can also help with this. If a third party reports your donations, I’m less likely to perceive you as boasting. (The “wing-man” strategy for dating is similar to this.)
This is the critical part.
Quick idea: You could create a “charity group” which would have membership, and would encourage people to give money to charity. The actual amounts of money given to specific causes would be publicly reported with members anonymized, like this: “In our group G, unspecified individuals donated to this cause the following amounts: X1, X2, X3.”
Your name would not be connected with the amount directly, but as a known member of the group you would still get some status indirectly. You could say: “My group supports a lot of causes, see here.” It does not sound as selfish as when you speak about yourself. Also, the total numbers would be more impressive (“I gave $100″ vs “our group of ten people gave $1000”).
Possible free-rider problem. Could be overcome by making the donations non-anonymous within the group, and anonymized only for the outside world. Or even anonymized for most of members (except those who do the accounting). For example as a member you precommit to give at least $X every year through the group, and this is verified. This information could also be made semi-known to the public (you don’t announce it too much, but it is in FAQ on your webpage).
I think you just independently derived GWWC.
If you are going to make a charity group anyway though, you might as well announce the name of the donor. The social pressures to donate will be higher if you announce the name of the donor, and as explained earlier the donor will not be punished by egalitarian instinct because the donor did not choose to have their name published in the public report—in fact the donor will get a higher status.
That could work! That way, you can tell outsiders “We are 20 people who raise a total of $10,000, will you help us?” It creates the feeling that everyone is donating, and doesn’t sound like boasting.
However, following the principles outlined above, within the group you wouldn’t want any anonymity at all (unless there is some hidden benefit to anonymity over plausibly-deniable publicity which you are seeing that I am not).
I think this would work fine. I would probably put an emphasis in the report on the group first—start by speaking about common effort and how much the group did together; provide individual names and numbers at the bottom of the page, or as a sidebar on the right side of the page.